Simons News

In this section of the website, you can find out about recent news revolving around Simon and Simons Friends and the fundraising efforts helping towards the Projects in West Africa that Simon was interested in. For more information about these, see Simons Projects, or to see more events, then check out Simons Archive section.

Simon's Projects Update 2007/2008

Simon’s father David has just returned from a two month and 5000 mile road trip around all And Albert Foundation’s project villages, including the furthest one North, Puyango, where Simon and subsequently his friends visited in 2005/06.

Simon’s “fund” has completed the first clean water well in the centre of this village last year and very recently another pump and well alongside the school, as often the children went without water all day.

Centre village well (left) and School well (right)

The reason AAF is focusing on this village is to achieve it’s sustainable development in the future. After the clean water we are beginning a fruit tree nursery this year and building an eco-tourist guest house using local traditional methods.

Mango tree nursery in Logshegu, Ghana

To do this, we need mud bicks which are made here. Our director Jonas will increase the brick making project, thus at the same time creating a village fish pond! But there is an even more important spin-off for Simon’s vocational focus. This is for the poorest kids, often orphaned who cannot go to school, who live and sleep rough and eat only scraps once a day, to have a future, otherwise they would be condemned to scratch a living from the meanest of tasks for no income. Here is mussah, under developed physically (he is 15 years old!) with all the signs of malnutrition, digging the mud for the bricks in order to find a place in village life. He wandered here after losing his family to disease and starvation further north.

Simon would want Moussa and the approximately 100 others like him in this village and its surroundings to have a real chance of a life.

This is our intention this year and we already have the backing of the Chief and his people asking us to work with them to achieve this.

Our proposal is to set up an extra fund for what we are doing in And Albert as a “Simon vocational workshop fund”, so Moussa and other marginalised children get a chance to develop their resources. Look out for ways you can help with Simon’s fund on both websites.

see www.and-albert.com for more infromation

That was all the recent news. If you're looking for more information, then why not try our Archive Section for more older articles and a collection of multrimedia attributes from this site. If you would like to get involved or you have an idea for fundraising yourself, then please email us at davidmurden@and-albert.com and we'll be happy to speak to you.